In 2019, Parisian cinema composer Jean-Gabriel Becker and Japanese composer and multi-instrumentalist Susumu Mukai embarked on the making of an album that was ultimately going to become „Time Very Near“.
The album that had been their focus for most of 2019 was finally released with great acclaim in April 2020 through the strangest time in history and echoed with their fellow musicians and producers for its singularity and originality. Prompted by a few unsolicited offers for remixes, Becker & Mukai saw an occasion to invite their community of musician and producer friends to re-invent, deconstruct and rebuild the songs on “Time Very Near”.
Studio mates, friends and colleagues accepted to play the game and re-arranged the pair’s global grooves and clattering beats into brand new original tracks. They all contributed to make the line-up for this project read like a who’s who of London’s electronic music scene: Joe Goddard from Hot Chip, who, from his studio next door, had been a witness of the birth of the project, was kind enough to unleash his killer beats on Spice War. Old friend Jas Shaw of Simian Mobile Disco fame transformed the tropical sounds of Dark Fields Of The Republic into a dance-floor ready techno workout. Long-time collaborator and friend Sasa Crnobrnja (In Flagranti, Mytron & Ofofo, Auf Togo) took Time Very Near on a trip to Jamaica. Label mate AMA//MIZU stripped Tout Azimuth down to its core to rebuild it with his unique production skills. Dreems delivered a sweltering 19 minute version of Dark Fields Of The Republic and a shorter version more suited for a vinyl listen. And finally Becker and Mukai chose to don alternative monikers (Zongamin for Mukai and Lux Prima for Becker) to re-interpret their own compositions.
Like the original album, this remix project gathers sounds and inspiration from an ever-expanding palette of influences, assembled into something amorphously intangible that’s simultaneously refreshing and sharp, meandering and cosmic, futuristic but timelessly vintage and manages to expand where the original album left off. In a similar process, the remix album’s cover is a re-invention of the original album art and will echo the collaborative collage that was created by the pair for “Time Very Near”.
